The Election Threats That Keep US Intelligence Up at Night

The Election Threats That Keep US Intelligence Up at Night

With the specter of 2016 Russian meddling still looming, and a global pandemic ravaging the United States, the 2020 election season has been particularly fraught. Now with less than six weeks to go until Election Day, US intelligence officials have gotten more vocal about the potential threats they're watching most closely. Much of that remains classified, but the alarms that are being raised serve as an important indicator of what's going on behind the scenes—and which election threats are most urgent for the public.


Congressional testimony from intelligence officials and public notices from relevant agencies paint a picture of an electoral process that is bracing for impact. Enforcement actions from Facebook indicate that the groundwork for foreign interference may already have been laid. But the signal flares also provide valuable instruction about how to respond responsibly if things do go wrong.


The good news first: On Thursday, FBI director Christopher Wray testified to the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he remains confident in THE US election infrastructure, and that the bureau has not seen evidence over time of major nation-scale voter fraud either with mail ballots or in-person voting. "Americans must have confidence in our voting system and our election infrastructure," he said. "We are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections."

The bad news, though, is that those remarks drew the ire of White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who told CBS on Friday that Wray "has a hard time fi ..

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